RE: Bill
"It seems to be somewhat arbitrary whether you stick "of" to the end of "symphony" or to the front of "summer," or just call it an unstressed catalectic syllable"
I should stress (no pun intended) that this is all a very tentative, formative idea thus far. I haven't really attempted yet to develop any kind of hypothesis or work towards an actual gosh-darn theory, and elements like you point out here (where individual unstressed words/syllables belong) is definitely one of the stumbling blocks of the enterprise. One reason I think the "of" more naturally belongs to "symphony" is because I find that strings of unstressed syllables tend to run together. It's one reason Pre-modern poets got away with synaloepha to maintain the meter as much as they did.
"On the other hand, the binary notation only relates the syllable to those adjacent to it, not to those further away."
Right, and the reason I say I'm fine with the binary notation is that I'm not sure what the usage would be of quantifying stresses of syllables farther away from each other. I guess one could ask the same about the usage of rhythm outside of meter, but I do think that's quite different as everyone (I think) would agree that meter and rhythm aren't identical.
"The advantage of the more traditional scansion is that it exists halfway between the "genotype" (the metrical formula) and the "phenotype" (the individual line), and shows how they relate to each other."
And I should note that I'm not advocating doing away with traditional scansion and noting the metrical formula and where/when the line deviates. That would be like doing away with a time signature in music. But just like there can be completely different rhythms under the same time signature in music (a 4/4 bar composed of a whole note at 60bpm will hardly feel the same as a 4/4 bar composed of sixteen 16th notes at 120bpm) I think there can be completely different rhythms under the same meter in poetry. I think the attempt at "real rhythm" would be an attempt to point these more idiosyncratic rhythms out.
"In your example, I'd be tempted to call "symphony," "summer qui-," "darkening," "decrescends," and "crescent sands" amphimacers, and to identify a dominant figure or foot as determining the real rhythm. "
I don't think they'd all work as amphimacers because "darkening" and "symphony" would naturally read as dactyls (until paired with a another syllable behind or in front). Likewise, I think when you have two words like "summer quiets" the trochee/trochee (or ditrochee, if you want) pattern is too strong to split up "quiets" into two different groupings (that splitting of words/sense is something that bugs me about using classic meter as the be-all, end-all of discussing rhythm).
Plus, and here's to the point about not throwing out classic meter, I think the couplet (and the rest of the poem, actually) establishes it as iambic, despite all the variations. Just going by repeated stresses there are far more iambs then there are any other foot. But, again, I just consider that the ictus from which more complex rhythmic patterns emerge.
"Can you say again what you see as the practical benefit of adding another layer of description, with or without the more esoteric terms? "
I think there are plenty of those who would ask why bother about ANY metrical notation at all. Those who read poetry for its imagistic pleasures may not give a hoot that the classics are written in iambic pentameter as, dagnabbit, they're going to read it in whatever stress-pattern feels natural to them. So I think the "why bother" can only ever be answered by "because some people care." I ask "why bother" with Lacanian analysis of films, but some people seem to get a kick out of it.
That out of the way, let me utilize a great example from Keats:
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art
Classically scanned would be something like: // || -/-//-//
Though some may make the argument it would be: // || -/-/-/-/ (but I think NOT stressing "fast" and stressing "as" would feel rather silly, so I'm going to work from the first)
I think it's still possible to read that as iambic pentameter with with a spondee substitution in F1 and F6 and a trochee in F5. Now, the question is how does one "group this," what's the "real rhythm?" The major thing I--and I think most--would notice here are the three pairs of consecutive stressed syllables: "Bright Star," "stedfast," "thou art." Once one picks those out I think you also notice a strong semantic correlation between them; it's almost the poem in little right there. In fact, inverse it and you have "Thou art stedfast Bright Star." So what's left over? Well, you have "would I were" between the 1st and 3rd spondee and "as" stuck between the 3rd and 4th. I think it makes sense to group these together to form an amphimacer and catalectic unstressed foot.
What's the use of this? Well, besides pointing out the semantic relation between the spondee set, I think it contrasts well with the two "leftovers:" "would I were" places the stressed "I" between an "island" of unstressed syllables while poor "as" is left out on its own. The differing rhythms of these two groupings contrasts wonderfully with the strong, consistent spondee pairs, seeming to enact the very thing it's describing: the speaker, like the words associated with him, are not as 'stedfast' as the 'bright star / thou art' subject.
So, in summation, I think the "use" of it is in pointing out certain substantial parallels and variations and what possible connotations it can have rhythmically on how we read a text. Perhaps one is tempted to call the above specious, sophistic, over-interpretation, but even if one is leery about assigning so definite and nuanced a meaning to such rhythms (I don't think many--if any--poets think this way about rhythm while composing), I still think the point about finding meaningful semantic/rhythmic patterns--like the spondees in Keats' poem, or the amphimacers in my couplet--is valuable to how rhythm can create semantic resonances in the mind of the reader.
RE: Orwn Acra
That link doesn't seem to be working, but I think it's a problem with the site itself.
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